Following the energy in cellular information processing

This talk will be presented online. Zoom link: 709 120 4849 (pw: 1234)

Abstract: John Hopfield first pointed out that there are barriers – we call them Hopfield barriers – to biological information-processing at thermodynamic equilibrium. I will explain how the widely-used Hill function with coefficient n is the universal Hopfield barrier to the sharpness of binding to n sites. Away from thermodynamic equilibrium, I will describe the challenge of path dependent  complexity and introduce the entropy-production index as a measure of non-equilibrium complexity.